Yiayia Maria's Kitchen

Like a Woody Allen film, baklava is multilayered, a little bit nutty, and a welcome addition to extended jury deliberations. Bite into a multifaceted treat with today’s Groupon from Yiayia Maria’s Kitchen. Groupon customers will also receive $10 off the purchase of any additional items. Choose between the following options:

For $12, you get a 1-pound box of gourmet baklava (a $25.15 value, including shipping).

For $39, you get a Greek dessert sampler (an $88.95 value, including shipping) that includes a 1-pound box of each of the following:

Baklava

Baklava brittle

Finikia

Pasta flora<p>

Named for the culinarily gifted matriarch of the Nicolopoulos family and helmed by her devoted grandchildren, Yiayia Maria’s Kitchen whips up dulcet greek desserts using all-natural ingredients and recipes passed down by the grandmother. Multiple layers of flaky crust and sweet filling blanket taste buds in the form of baklava, which is pieced together by hand. Pastry architects scrupulously hand-place 30 layers of paper-thin organic phyllo dough, keeping careful eyes out for gusts of wind and Godzilla as they spread a butter-and-nut mixture between each tier. Sweet honey soaks through the pastry structure, seeping into each phyllo wall before the family-signature clove is placed on each piece. The baklava is made with eggs from free-roaming, cage-free hens devoid of antibiotics, pesticides, and growth hormones.

Inside a greek-dessert-sampler box, a quartet of goodies, including baklava, prepares to serenade sweet teeth with sumptuous flavors. Doused with honey, greek holiday cookies known as finikia serve as bait for luring a raccoon into a rival driver’s racecar, and baklava brittle morphs baklava into a frangible form. Pasta flora butter tarts glitter with gem-like centers of apricot, strawberry, and raspberry preserves.

An additional package-handling charge of $2.85 is not included in today’s Groupon.

Yiayia Maria's Kitchen

When recalling how his Yiayia—or grandmother—taught him to make baklava, the eldest brother of the Nicolopoulos family remembers the way she would painstakingly roll out homemade sheets of phyllo dough onto a clean white sheet. Rolling it thinner and thinner, she would drizzle it with melted butter to keep it soft and moist until finally the delicate dough was so thin her grandson could see right through it to read the words "one hundred percent cotton" on the sheet label beneath. "I didn't realize it then," he says, "but Yiayia was teaching me patience, about quality, and about our heritage."

Fifty years later, that same dedication to quality and heritage permeates the Nicolopoulos' pastry shop, which owes its name to the family's patient matriarch. Each of the shop's dulcet Greek desserts is whipped up using all-natural ingredients—including eggs from free-roaming hens that are cage- and antibiotic-free––and generations-old recipes. To craft rectangles of baklava in true Yiayia Maria style, pastry architects scrupulously hand assemble 30 layers of paper-thin organic phyllo dough, keeping careful eyes out for gusts of wind as they spread a butter-and-nut mixture between each tier. Sweet honey soaks through the pastry structure, seeping into each phyllo wall before the family's signature clove is placed on each piece. Honey also plays a starring role in Yiayia's finikia cookies—which feature hints of cinnamon, clove, and orange in the subtly sweet morsels dusted with walnuts—and tart-like pasta flora butter cookies take a dip in the sweet stuff after being filled with apricot, strawberry, or raspberry preserves.